Neo-Quenya Wiki:Guidelines

Introduction
This article holds the Neo-Quenya Wiki guidelines. These are recommendations on all aspects of our Wiki. Guidelines are no absolute rules, i.e. they can be surpassed on some occasions. However, this should not happen without a solid reason.

Guidelines are recommended for reading for all users who are new to Neo-Qeunya Wiki, especially to those who have not worked on any MediaWiki-driven project.

Aims and scope
The goal of this Wiki project is to create a free encyclopaedia in Neo-Quenya (which we usually refer to as Quenya for briefness). We believe that it would serve multiple purposes: provide a lecture and writing practice for Quenya learners, provide a community for those who are interested in Quenya and (more ambitious) give a description of the surrounding world in Quenya, thus promoting this beautiful language.

Topics
We don't have limitations on, say, Elven or Tolkien topics and welcome articles on all kind of subjects. The general rule is: If it is in Wikipedia, it is welcome here. A warning must be spoken, though, since the more distant a topic is from the subjects of Tolkien's creations, the more words which have not originally appeared in Quenya (neologisms) will have to appear there, and the more attention will the author have to pay. For this reason, it is better to read related articles first (if there are any) to see which terms have already been agreed upon.

Article size
We all know very well that it is quite hard to write a long text in a language still to be learned, where every third word must be looked up in a dictionary. However, it is always better to write at least one small paragraph on the topic. If you feel that you absoultely cannot write more than a sentence, place a stub template - someone will come and help.

Text
An article starts with the subject term written in boldface. Alternative terms for the same subject are given inb parentheses in italic. The first sentence typically looks like: "%subjectname is...". The first paragraph describes the subject most briefly.

The main text should be structured in sections and subsections, which can be invoked by embracing the title of the section into double (for the section) or triple (for the subsection) equation signs.

Having reached the end, you should take care of navigation and networking. A good style is to place links to several related articles in the section A céna yando (see also). Also, a category or two (apart from automated categories) should be added.

Templates
Remarks such as Template:Stub should be placed at the top of the article, unless this remark is valid only for a special section (in which case it should be placed there). Navigation bars such as Template:Quendi should be placed at the bottom.

Special characters
The letters á, é, í, ó, ú and ë are part of Quenya language. They must not be omitted. If you don't want to copypaste these letters every time you need to use them, there are two possibilities for the accents. For an international keyboard, you can type an apostroph, followed by the respective vowel. Alternatively, you can hold the Alt key and type the following number on the numpad:
 * 0225 for á
 * 0233 for é
 * 0237 for í
 * 0243 for ó
 * 0250 for ú

The letter ë can be typed by pressing Alt+0235. Attention: The letter ë of the extended Latin alphabet is technically not the same as the cyrillic ё. To avoid difficulties with searching machines (which do distinguish between the two), always use the former.

Internal links
Internal links can be set by embracing the term into two square brackets:
 * Arcastar returns Arcastar
 * Arcastarenen returns Arcastarenen
 * Tolkien returns Tolkien

However, MediaWiki seems to have a problem with the ending ë, so that Ardassë would return Ardassë. Use Ardassë instead.

Use of languages
Quenya is the only allowed language in all articles of the main namespace was well as for all templates which are included in these articles. No exceptions. The only things which may appear in other languages are names of references listed in the respective section.

At the same time, both Quenya and English are allowed in Talks pages. In fact, no one has expressed himself in Quenya in Talks yet, and, surely, some time will pass until even most active users are fluent enough in written Quenya to express their thoughts in Talks unproblematically - but the formal permission exists. However, all other languages must be dubbed in any of the both.

Neologisms
The vocabulary which was given by Tolkien originally and which could be derived from his heritage is clearly not enough to describe the world surrounding us. Everyone who attempts to do exactly this is forced to bring new elements into Quenya, actually making up the difference between (pure) Quenya and Neo-Quenya. Every author will face this problem sooner or later - most possibly writing his very first article.

If you find that you absolutely have to bring in a new or modified word or give an existing Quenya word a new, similar meaning, you should make sure that it has not been defined before first. Here, a search in our list of neologisms could help. Also, read this one. Remember: Even if we dare to expand Quenya, we are still trying to keep it as close to Tolkien's idea as possible. This also means that a word originally created by Tolkien always has higher priority than a neologism.

The normal practice of neologism introduction consists of two steps: First, post the neologism on the Talk page of the respective article. You should be aware that your neologism might be revised or rejected by others. In this case, we expect a discussion which is polite on both sides, and where sanity prevails over personal ambitions. Like in Wikipedia, the terminal criteria for a desicion is a consensus.

If no objections on the neologisms follow on Talk page, the neologisms are transferred to the list of neologisms, usually after several days. This does not mean that any further discussion on the neologism is prohibited: Any neologism can be questioned reasonably at every moment.

To ensure a consistency of the quenya language, we will try to synchronize our neologism list with existing ones. Therefore, a word which has been found externally should usually be used instead of a word coined here at the Wiki.

Transcriptions and translations
Trying to translate toponyms into Quenya (like making Osto Ioanno from "Johannesburg") is very bad style in most cases. However, characterizing words like (%empirename) Empire or Republic of (%republicname) must be translated.

Transcriptions in Quenya are quite tricky since Quenya has definite rules about which combination of letters are allowed. Several letters of the Latin alphabet, i.e. "z" simply do not exist in Quenya. Toponims are no exception to this, so when trancribing a toponym, its validity must be checked.

A Quenya word can begin with a vowel or with the following consonants:

"c, f, h, l, m, n, p, q, r, s, t, v, w and y"

or following consonant groups:

"qu, ty, ny and nw"

At there end, there is also either a vowel, or one of the following consonants:

"t, s, n, l or r"

Consonant combinations preferred are:

"ld, mb, mp, nc, nd, ng, ngw nqu, nt, nw, ps, qu, ts and x"

Other possible consonant combinations are:

"cc, ht, hty, lc, ll, lm, lp, lqu, lt, lv, lw, ly, mm, mn my nn nty, ny, pt, rc, rd, rm, rn, rqu, rr, rt, rty, rs, rw, ry, sc, squ, ss, st sty, sw tt, tw and ty"

These lists are terminal, i.e. there are no other valid combinations of consonants which can appear in a Quenya word.

Tengwar
Quenya should be written in Latin alphabet. The reason is that for a reader who is not fluent in Quenya, the reading of Tengwar would post additional difficulties. An introduction of a respective namespace is possibe in the future, but for now, write Latin.